PORTUGAL

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 75, 19 September 1911, Page 8

PORTUGAL

CHURCH AND STATE. By Cable—Press Association—Copyright./ Received 18, 11 p.m. Lisbon, September 18. The Government intend to modify the drastic provisions of the decree ejecting the separation of the church and State. THE CHURCH HUMILIATED. A Portuguese bishop recently gave his opinion of the new law for the separation of Church and State in that country. He said:---"The law is entirely different from t!ie French, and Brazilian laws. It places the Portuguese clergy in a humiliating and abject .position. No government has ever before had such control over the Church. Not only are all the present possessions appropriated, but also future acquisitions; if a congregation desires to build a new church, the building passes after ninety-nine years into the hands of the State. All gifts made to the Church are to be handled by parochial commissions, and the Church only receives about one-tenth, the remainder being distributed as the Government thinks lit. The State will practically have control over the administration of canonical rights, which should pertain only to the church. F»r instance, it appoints the professors in seminaries; the seminaries are reduced from thirteen to live; sisterhoods are abolished, and public processions are restricted. The law attacks ecclesiastic discipline by inviting priests to marrjand giving pensions to their widows and children. It leaves the bishops and the clergy to the mercy of the lay element, and even the promised stipends will remain under the control of parochial commissions and other Government, liodies. which are generally adverse to the Church."